✍🏾 Life After the Contract
From signing day to volcano views to revisiting family history
It still feels surreal to say it, but I’m officially a Livingston Press author. I signed the contract for Samaná: Seven Generations on September 27th, and three days later I was on a plane to Costa Rica. The timing couldn’t have been scripted better if I tried.
I had already booked the trip before I even knew the deal was happening. So when the papers came through, I signed them, packed my bags, and took off. It felt like the universe saying, “You did it. Now breathe.”
La Fortuna was everything I needed: volcano views, hot springs, Gallo Pinto, good people, and space to just exist after months of nonstop writing and publishing chaos. It was the perfect way to celebrate something I’ve been chasing for a long time.
And yes, of course I brought author copies of Story Letters from Samaná with me.
When I got back to Miami Beach, it was right back to work. Joe Taylor, my editor at Livingston, asked me to pull together some inspiration photos for the cover. So I spent the week editing, polishing the manuscript, and gathering old family photos from my mom and my aunt.
That part hit me hard. Seeing the faces of my great-grandparents, the people who inspired this novel, made everything real in a way words never could. It stopped being just about a book deal. It became about legacy, about being able to hold my family’s story in my hands and give it back to them through this book.
Yesterday was emotional — looking through those photos and realizing these are the people I’ve been writing toward all along: my great-grandparents and grandparents on my mother’s side.
This season of my life has been wild. I went from grinding through edits in my apartment to signing with a university press, traveling to Costa Rica, and coming home to start designing the cover of my debut novel.
It’s only been eleven days since signing, but it feels like I’ve lived a lifetime in between.
Here’s to the next chapter, literally and literary.
📖 Read the Story That Started It All
Before Samaná: Seven Generations became a novel under Livingston Press, it started as a small act of preservation — a 10,000-word letter to history.
That letter grew into a movement.
If you want to read where this journey began, explore the early editions that carried the heartbeat of the full novel:
Story Letters from Samaná (10K English Edition on Amazon)
→ The original condensed version that set everything in motion — poetic, intimate, and rooted in the legacy of the Samaná Americans.Cartas de Samaná (10K Spanish Edition on Amazon)
→ The Spanish translation, carrying a different emotional current — same story, new feeling, two languages in conversation across the sea.Story Letters from Samaná (Digital Gumroad Edition w/ Pan Cocolo Recipe)
→ Includes the 10K version plus the traditional Pan Cocolo (Johnny Cake) recipe passed down through the Samaná community. $7+ (pay what you want).The Root Verse: A Legacy in Seven Poems
→ A poetic companion to the novel — seven generational verses that echo the themes of memory, silence, and return. $3.99.
Each of these pieces is part of the same story world — fragments of the same inheritance.
Because legacy isn’t one book or one deal.
It’s every echo that keeps the story alive.